Sunday, December 5, 2010

Opportunity for growth in IT based Brain Training and Cognitive learning

The rise in interest in Dementia, Alzheimer's, Brain Training and more generalised health reforms may well lead to an opportunity for reim­bursable brain assess­ments, ser­vices and evidence-based non-invasive inter­ven­tions.

Bet­ter assess­ments, tax­onomies, deci­sion sup­port sys­tems and inte­grated research efforts will enable the field to mature and inte­grate into main­stream care a new gen­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal tools to assess, enhance, and treat cog­ni­tion.

Currently, there are no magic pills or gen­eral solu­tions to encourage brain health and flexibility, but there is a toolkit of grow­ing value when used appropriately.

We con­tinue to pre­dict that between now and 2015 brain fit­ness will become a main­stream con­cept, hope­fully sup­ported by a brain-based remedial framework. A concept that con­sumers and insti­tu­tions will have access to much enhanced dig­i­tal toolk­its and plat­forms, and that a grow­ing ecosys­tem will enable this growth.

Unfor­tu­nately, all the ground­break­ing research and inno­va­tion has been occur­ring with­out a par­al­lel growth of qual­ity con­sumer edu­ca­tion and pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment.

Cog­ni­tion remains an elu­sive con­cept in pop­u­lar cul­ture, which lim­its the abil­ity of con­sumers and pro­fes­sion­als to make informed deci­sions. This may well be the major bot­tle­neck lim­it­ing the field’s poten­tial to deliver real-world ben­e­fits and move up the remedial benefits curve.

Unfortunately, only informed demand will ulti­mately ensure the devel­op­ment of a ratio­nal and struc­tured marketplace.

Inno­v­a­tive part­ner­ships will be required to chan­nel the grow­ing amount of inter­est, research, tools and, yes, con­tro­versy, into a bet­ter struc­tured and sus­tain­able mar­ket­place.

It is fore­cast that the world­wide mar­ket will range between $2-8 bil­lion by 2015, depend­ing on how well the impor­tant cat­e­gory bot­tle­necks are addressed.